Reaching the UnreachedAn annual conference for churches trying to reach out in the hard places of our land

‘Going Viral’

‘How can the gospel go viral on estates and schemes in the UK?’

Friday 17th May, 4pm-9.15pm and Saturday 18th May, 9.30am-4.30pm

This year’s conference looks at how the gospel can go viral on housing estates and schemes in the UK. It’s a look at the new strategy of RTU for the gospel going viral in the UK.

Main Speakers

Andy Mason
Efrem Buckle
Duncan Forbes
Mez McConnell
Neil Robbie

There are a limited number of spaces so book your place!

This year the conference is held in Derby at:

St Giles Church
Village Street
Normanton
Derby
DE23 8DE

BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE

A full programme will be sent out after booking.

More quotes from Roy Joslin’s Urban Harvest to mark the thirtieth anniversary of its publication …

Joslin speaks of ‘sanctified imagination’. He illustrates this with a couple of examples:

A young mother chose to do her washing in the local laundrette because it was a useful meeting point for developing links with other local mothers. In her scale of values, deepening of relationships with neighbours was more important than the convenience of doing her washing at home, even though she possessed her own washing machine. Shopping times provided natural and useful opportunities for developing contacts with people. In her scale of values effective evangelism was more important than efficient shopping. For her it was preferable to make her purchases from two shops even though she could have obtained all the items from one. Her approach to personal evangelism was determined by a matter of simple arithmetic. It is better to witness to two shopkeepers than it is to one! (152)

Christians must take the time and trouble to be good neighbours. If we are too busy running church activities to find time to be neighbourly, then we are too busy. (283)

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas, was written with the Reaching the Unreached network.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.

More quotes from Roy Joslin’s Urban Harvest to mark the thirtieth anniversary of its publication …

Generally speaking, the working man is not willing to go to church – it is outside his circle; he does not belong to that ‘class’. But if we make the main focus of our evangelism the preaching of the gospel from the pulpit we are discriminating unfairly against the working man. (91)

Joslin cites Iain Murray:

The exercise of spiritual gifts by preaching elders in the meetings of the church is not the primary means by which the gospel spreads. That exercise is limited both by time and by place, but the witness of Christians in the midst of the world is not thus limited. It seems to be that this point demands our special attention because I am afraid that the tendency of our tradition has been away from the New Testament. (97-98)

Joslin himself says:

Paul’s evangelism among the Jews showed a certain uniformity. But his gospel work among the Gentiles exhibited great variety. There was no ‘standard religious situation’ comparable to the synagogue. So Paul preached and witnessed in the open air (Acts 17:22-32); in the market place (Acts 17:17); in a hired hall (Acts 19:19); in private homes (Acts 18:7); in prison (Phil. 1:12,13); by the riverside (Acts 16:13); before the Roman authorities (Acts 26: 1-29) and on board ship (Acts 27: 23-25). (99-100)

Preaching the gospel in a place of Christian worship takes place usually at a time and a place which suit the believers. Gentile evangelism will inevitably involve us in reaching the unbelievers at a time and place that suits them. Is Sunday necessarily the best day for evangelising the working classes? John Wesley regularly preached at five o’clock in the morning! He did this in order to reach the ‘labouring-class’ people before they went off at daybreak to commence work in a factory or a mine. (101)

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas, was written with the Reaching the Unreached network.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.

I often have very encouraging conversations with people who are not yet Christians. Many of these are people that I have met through door to door ministry. I have a distinct advantage in that I have known many of these people for somewhere in the region of six or seven years. My first visit, in some sense, was “cold.” But going regularly to the same people means that people get to know me and notice when I am not around. They sometimes complain that I don’t call often enough or they tell me who else I should be visiting.

Some people I have met through door to door visitation have become a part our church, others have been content to talk about spiritual matters in their homes and a few have read the Bible with me.

We are looking for long term relationships where we love each household individually – and we want to take opportunities to share the Gospel that are genuine and go to the heart.

I know that people sometimes want privacy – and it is important to respect this. If people are busy I can always go round another time. But a wonderful privilege in this work is that people have actively invited me into their homes and into their worlds and have spoken openly about the struggles that they face. The degree of openness is sometimes overwhelming.

We want to build genuine relationships in which to share the Gospel. So the last thing I want to be is a door to door salesman that is only interested in his commission. I want people to know that there is a community that loves them, that there is a saviour who loves them. Going round to their flats opens the door to many, many gospel opportunities that are genuine and effective.

It is also true that many of these people will never meet a local Christian unless we take the first step to reach them.

John Stott, in his book “The Living Church” (2007), says this:

Local church evangelism can claim to be the most normal, natural and productive method of spreading the gospel today. First there is the argument from scripture …

Secondly, there is the argument from strategy. Each local church is situated in a particular neighbourhood. Its first mission responsibility must therefore be to the people who live there. The congregation is strategically placed to reach the area around it…

Thus biblical theology and practical strategy combine to make the local church the primary agent of evangelism.

My personal view is that door to door ministry, done sensitively and regularly, can make a contribution towards fulfilling this ambition.

So a contemporary of mine was headed off to Leipzig to plant a church there, at the same time I was off to Dagenham. Because he was going overseas, churches responded enthusiastically to his requests for money and equipment, and to enter into gospel partnership with him for the long term. People assumed, because we were going somewhere in the UK, that that sort of support was unnecessary.

My observation is that churches in the UK think we are ‘Jerusalem’ – in other words, the gospel is going out from us to the ends of the earth. But actually we are the ends of the earth! We are the mission field, the place to which the gospel is going out, every bit as much as it is to Leipzig or Uganda or China.

The mission agency Crosslinks recently produced a pair of world maps. They showed the striking contrast of relative material and spiritual poverty in the world. Although materially wealthy, the UK and Europe are clearly among the darkest and most spiritually bankrupt places on the globe. A recent survey showed there were less Christians per capita in Yorkshire than in Japan!

My point is that we should view the pastor-evangelists in the UK as missionaries every bit as much as those going overseas. And where they’re going into under-resourced situations, there should be no less enthusiasm to respond to requests for money and equipment and long term gospel partnership. Most of the RTU churches we speak to are small in numbers, with members in the lowest income brackets. Gospel mission cannot be sustained there without support. I keep coming across pastors, their families and churches struggling to survive because the sort of support afforded overseas missionaries is simply not in place for them.

What are the chief enemies?

1. An unhelpful ‘british’ embarrassment to talk about or ask for money. But we fail to ask because we mistakenly think this is about funding me and my family personally. Whereas it’s actually about investing in vigorous gospel mission right on the front line.
2. The prosperity gospel causing us to hesitate. So many pastors have fleeced the sheep instead of feeding the sheep,that we’re afraid our request for money will be misunderstood, that we’re in it for the dosh. But this simply requires us to be transparent, & to have budgets that clearly meet our needs, not provide for our luxuries.
3. The isolation of independent churches. For all the benefits of being free from denominationalism, independents have little experience, and an innate suspicion of networking & partnership. We’ve got to get over this and start connecting with churches of means. For generations this is how gospel mission has been funded and resourced overseas.

As a way ahead we need to explore:

1. For long term resourcing – how to connect churches and individuals of means with pastors and churches on the estates and housing projects. For example, in Dagenham we have benefitted from long term gospel partnerships with 5 or 6 churches and 10 to 15 individuals, who have enabled us to sustain a team of 4 for over ten years. We have had some additional funding from charitable trusts, but that only lasts for 2 or 3 years at a time. We have close connections with our long term gospel partners, praying for each other, occasionally engaging in mission together, & taking a real interest in each other’s work.
2. For short term resourcing – how to sponsor training. Is the way ahead to create an RTU trust fund to which men and women can apply, to see them through courses and residential training? It will take huge start-up donations to establish such an instrument but we believe in a Lord who can do more than we can ask or imagine.

Getting Started & Keeping Going:

Building estates ministries with enduring gospel impact

In the estates of the UK new churches are being started, established churches are being renewed, and forgotten communities are being reached. Yet there remains so much to do. How do we get started? And how do we keep going?

Getting Started & Keeping Going is a weekend of discussion, prayer and teaching for all those with a heart to see enduring gospel impact on UK estates.

You can find more information and book your place here, or watch the conference trailer above.

Video produced by 2V design

In Urban Harvest Roy Joslin highlights that those living in deprived areas often form their opinions on life based mainly on impression – what they see and experience. The middle-class on the other hand, often those who have been through higher education, shape their worldview primarily through reasoning. This has massive implications for us as Christians in these areas – what we do is as important as what we say.

I just wanted to provide a real life example of this, which forced me to start thinking more about how I speak about the gospel.

A mum who lived near us made a throwaway comment about smoking. She said she thought smoking when pregnant was fine. I asked her what she thought about the big label on her cigarette packet, “SMOKING WHEN PREGNANT HARMS YOUR BABY”. She replied that it was a load of rubbish. She then went on to explain that she had followed the doctor’s advice with her first child, and had stopped smoking. The pregnancy had been tough, and there were serious complications at the birth. So for her next pregnancy she took no notice of the warnings and happily puffed away through her nine months. This time the pregnancy, birth and baby were all fine. Her conclusion: the doctors are wrong, and smoking is fine.

I thought about how this lady had formed her opinion on the poison of smoking. And I realised most of what I was saying about the poison of sin and the remedy of the gospel was probably going over her head too! Not because I was using complicated reasoning, but because I wasn’t connecting with or countering her existing impressions of Christianity.

So how do we adjust for this difference in thinking? Joslin says mistaken opinions “can only be changed by… the influence of a contrary set of sense impressions”. Real life testimonies can have a massive effect here, particularly if they are from others who have grown up in the same area. But there is no quick substitute for simply doing as Jesus did, and being ‘a friend of sinners’. Only then will the radical difference of our Christ-centred, Spirit-empowered lives both connect with and counter those false impressions.

I preached my first town centre open air sermon in Bridgend yesterday, and I felt like when I was dared to dive off the three metre board at the local swimming pool when I was 11: absolutely terrified! But there was a great crew of friends out too praying hard, and picking up conversations with those who looked interested.

Anyway, the main point is, most people didn’t stop to listen, but there was a steady flow of people passing nonetheless. I reckon there was a one-minute envelope from when these people came within ‘firing’ range, to when they were out of earshot.

So the challenge is this: how do you best communicate the good news of Jesus in one minute?

I think you need to be:

• Ear-catching. It has to grab people’s attention whether by being vivid, or controversial, or even a bit odd! Jesus’ ear-catching parables, as well as hardening some hearts, also had the effect of opening others. As Spurgeon put it, like first tickling an oyster, so that you can then slip in the knife – the killer punchline!
• Direct. This can be no simple presentation of facts. The gospel call is not a lecture, it’s a lifeline thrown to the drowning person with a direct instruction to grab hold!
• Uncompromising. Paul preached in different cultures, cities and contexts. And while the manner and style of the presentation varied, the message of ‘Christ crucified’ (1 Cor 1:23) stood rock solid.

To give you some ideas, here’s what I preached today:

Anybody interested in knowing this Saturday’s lottery numbers? Course you are! Everyone wants to be rich right? You can be rich right now. Not rich with money – rich with something better. Jesus Christ was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. Jesus was loaded in heaven. But he swapped it for a hard life here, and shameful execution on a cross. Why? So that he might give you his riches in place of your guilt. Trust Jesus with your life – he will give you the riches of knowing God personally.

Phew! It’s hard to be brief! A couple of cheeky uses of dashes, and there we go: 100 words!

But I want your ideas! Post a comment below with your one-minute gospel and I will shamelessly use the best ones on the street! Soli Deo Gloria.

Door to door visitation is a great way to build strong relationships between the local church and local people. The goal is for the same person to visit the same people to win them for Christ’s sake.  We try to visit them every three months.  Often, those conversations are about the common things of life but we are building trust with people and forming a long term relationship.  As a result, we have many conversations about the Lord, people are invited (and come) to our Church, we strengthen our relationship with local people and build a strong network with the community around us.

Today, I am attending the funeral of a man that I met through door to door visitation.  I have a very good relationship with his family, some of whom I have also met through visitation to a different address.  Several people I have met in this way are now coming to St. James – and they are very much a part of our church community. Some are reading the Bible with me regularly. Many of the people I know might never meet a Christian otherwise.  Meeting them this way means they have the opportunity to hear the Gospel, be invited and respond.

What do you think about door to door visitation?  And what can make it easier or more difficult?